Meg Whitman, Chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard at the 2016 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

HPE stock rose by about 5 percent on Tuesday after the enterprise software and hardware maker disclosed better-than-expected earnings for the third quarter of its 2017 fiscal year, which ended on July 31.

EPS: Excluding certain items, 30 cents in earnings per share vs. 26 cents in earnings per share as expected by analysts, according to Thomson Reuters.

Tuesday's press release on the earnings report has a fairly standard quote from Whitman, suggesting that she's not going anywhere for the moment. "The results of the third quarter are an encouraging sign of the progress we are making," Whitman is quoted as saying. "With better execution we drove overall revenue growth, exceeded our EPS targets and improved our operating margins sequentially, all while completing the spin-merge of our Software business. There's more work to do, but we are on the right track."

As a whole, HPE's revenue for the quarter, when the figure is adjusted for divestitures as well as currency, was up 6 percent year over year. Without those adjustments, revenue is up 3 percent.

In terms of guidance, HPE says it's expecting to earn 26-30 cents per share in the fourth quarter of its fiscal year. Analysts were expecting the company to forecast EPS of 40 cents on $7.74 billion in revenue for the quarter, according to Thomson Reuters.

HPE adjusted its guidance for the full fiscal year to reflect the software spin-off. It's now expecting $1.36-1.40 in earnings per share.

The company's biggest business segment, its enterprise group, which includes data center hardware, came in at $6.8 billion, up 3 percent year over year and above the FactSet analyst estimate of $6.37 billion, according to FactSet. Server revenue, a key metric, was down 1 percent year over year, while storage revenue was up by 11 percent and networking revenue was up by 16 percent, HPE said.